World News Quick Take

Agencies

UNITED STATES

Loud music prompts arrest

Authorities say a New Hampshire woman has been arrested four times in 26 hours for blasting the AC/DC song Highway to Hell and other loud music from her home and for throwing a frying pan. Police first issued a warning to Joyce Coffey on Tuesday afternoon at her home in Epping. They say they were called back an hour later and arrested her for the loud music. Police say Coffey was arrested again five hours later. She was released and arrested again before dawn on Wednesday over more loud music. Police arrested her again after her nephew said he tried to remove some of his belongings from her house and she threw the frying pan at him.

AFGHANISTAN

Army recruits to be vetted

The commander of US special forces in the country has suspended training for all new Afghan recruits until Afghan soldiers are re-investigated for ties to insurgents, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. The newspaper said the re-vetting process is to affect more than 27,000 troops. The suspension comes in response to the killing of at least 45 US troops this year by their Afghan colleagues. “We have a very good vetting process,” the paper quotes an unnamed senior special operations official as saying. “What we learned is that you just can’t take it for granted. We probably should have had a mechanism to follow up with recruits from the beginning.”

BRAZIL

Slum anger at police killings

Two people were killed on Saturday during a counter-narcotics operation by an elite police unit in a slum, angering residents who blocked a main road into Rio de Janeiro. The mayor’s central operations office reported that Brasil Avenue, which runs from the international airport into the downtown area, was blocked for more than 20 minutes by protesters, near the Complexo da Mare favela. The victims, both 25-year-old suspects, sustained bullet wounds and died while being transported to hospital. Many run-down favelas are crime-plagued that have long lacked even basic city services. The nation is also trying to burnish its international image ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

PERU

Gold mine protests quashed

The government says that it is to lift a state of emergency today imposed in early July for three provinces where violent protests against a gold mine project resulted in five deaths and dozens of injuries. However, the office of President Ollanta Humala also said that security forces are to remain on alert to guard against disturbances. Hundreds of soldiers have been deployed in the three provinces to quell protests against the proposed US$8 billion Conga gold mine. Poor farmers in the region fear the mine will hurt their water supplies and have been mounting protests since last year. The state of emergency suspended the right of assembly and other civil liberties in the three provinces.

CANADA

Legionnaire’s kills 10

An outbreak of Legionnaire’s disease in Quebec City has killed 10 people since late July, health authorities said on Saturday in an updated toll. A total of 165 people have so far been diagnosed with the disease, which poses a risk for people with weak immune systems. Regional health authorities noted that the most recent count included cases reported over the past 10 to 15 days, as Legionnaire’s has an incubation period of two to 10 days.